Plate efficiencies in multicomponent distillation

Abstract

A first approximation to the multicomponent plate‐efficiency problem has been carried out with a film model combined with equations for steady state diffusion in a ternary gas mixture. Numerical integration of the equations through a plate yields the ternary efficiencies as functions of the binary efficiency.The effects of diffusional interactions in a distillation column were studied by computing the efficiencies on each plate when a column is designed to separate a ternary mixture. In the example studied, the average column efficiency was 39% less than the binary efficiency.Some criteria are suggested for comparing other multicomponent systems to the one studied in order to estimate the uncertainty in the use of binary correlations for these systems.